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Finding the Downside In San Francisco's Tech Boom
snydeq writes "The NYTimes reports on the San Francisco's shifting socio-economic landscape thanks to a massive influx of tech workers and tax and regulation breaks to big-name startups. 'In a city often regarded as unfriendly to business, Mayor Edwin M. Lee, elected last year with the tech industry's strong backing, has aggressively courted start-ups. But this boom has also raised fears about the tech industry's growing political clout and its spillover economic effects. Apartment rents have soared to record highs as affordable housing advocates warn that a new wave of gentrification will price middle-class residents out of the city. At risk, many say, are the very qualities that have drawn generations of outsiders here, like the city's diversity and creativity. Families, black residents, artists and others will increasingly be forced across the bridge to Oakland, they warn.'"
That this is also an economic boon for Oakland.
Rich people spending too much money results in inflation at a local level. Film at 11.
First they complained because of "suburb flight" where affluent persons moved to the suburbs and left-behind a poor base in the city.
Now they are complaining that the affluent people are moving back in.
I wish they'd make up their mind.
Do they want the upper/middle incomes to leave the city, or stay in the city? Either way, it appears they will wine about it.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
USA Today was reporting on this 5 years ago.....
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-26-urban-blacks_N.htm
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
At risk, many say, are the very qualities that have drawn generations of outsiders here, like the city's diversity and creativity. Families, black residents, artists and others will increasingly be forced across the bridge to Oakland, they warn.
Means:
The diversity and creativity formerly accumulated in SF will now spread throughout the SF Bay Area.
Why is this a bad thing?
SF has long since been a homogeneous place of wealthy professionals, with a fringe of poor lefties living in the Tenderloin. Blacks have long since moved out of California, often to Atlanta.
California is rich in the real resources that these new start ups need. People, and culture. - No really! It's the place to come if you've got good ideas and the drive to execute them. It's also a great place to live if you enjoy being with people that think that way. (In b4 shitstorm of groupthink California hate-on comments. Sorry guys, get your own ideas.) The facebook movie illustrates this idea very well. They went to California because it's the only place they could find the people, talent, places, and other resources to make their idea work. It's the culture.
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Funny how supposedly business hostile California is home to the most cutting edge, high tech companies in the nation. California is only "hostile to business" if you are in the business courting of govt handouts to corporations or abusing your workers.
So there's no way a successful and educated population can be diverse and creative. Got it. I do like to check in on ideologythink now and again.
Why not report on the apparent boon that's coming Oakland's way, what with the tide of diverse and creative refugee artist families heading their way.
If you make X more desirable, you will likewise make X more valuable. It doesn't much matter what X is as long as X is a finite resource. Whether it's a boom town in North Dakota with rents in the thousands of dollars per month or San Francisco is completely moot. Demand increases value, value increases cost, cost decreases affordability.
Why, oh why, are people surprised by this? This was old news in the times or the ancient Romans. To put it simply, this economics 101, supply and demand in action. Next big surprise story, Chinese factories have long hours for little wages, yet still turn down 10 applications for every job?
it takes years to get any large structure built and while you read about politicians and community activist bemoaning the lack of affordable housing you never see real progress. Instead you get locals doing the classic NIMBY maneuver. Oh its fine and dandy if you build it OVER THERE!... which of course the over there crowd don't want it either. Lots of lip service and little action, the point being that the type of construction needed for truly affordable and sustainable housing is not the type that occurs.
then there is the whole concept of what affordable housing really means.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I think it just makes for a nice conversation piece - intriguing news, at that, honestly. Certainly, an economic change in any area may serve to create some related cultural shifts, in that area and surrounding areas. Whether in the abstract, or in any more pragmatic details, why should we be so concerned about it, at that?
Do we want the city to stop developing a stronger technological entrepreneurship base? Probably not the best of goals.
Do we want real estate agents to stop increasing prices, if that trend continues? "Good luck with that."
Or do we simply not want to replace all the struggling artists with entrepreneurs? Is that the expected outcome? Maybe some of those new businesses will support the local arts communities - "problem solved," lol.
I'm certain that the city of San Francisco, and of her neighboring metropolitan areas, can constructively adapt to such change, in however it goes.
This has already been happening for quite a while, and among friends who live in the area, San Francisco has already developed a reputation as being a sort of fortress of elite upper middle income people. The city's demographic, according to friends, is most favorable to mid-career types in their late twenties and early thirties: people who have already established their careers and have the money to afford the skyrocketing cost of living in the city but at the same time do not need space for raising children. Lower-middle incomes, poor people and families are being replaced by yuppies. You see similar trends in major cities across the United States, New York, Washington DC, etc., but San Francisco is noteworthy because of the sheer amounts of money being thrown around thanks to the new tech boom.
Fact of the matter is the whole freaking area is WAY overdue for a huge earthquake of the proportions that crashed and burned the city at the start of the 20th century. Until that occurs I have to wonder about putting my family in danger.
Sure, there is danger everywhere but ask any Geologist about the chances of a major earthquake in San Francisco and it's definitely not trivial.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/ucerf/
When Full House being filmed, Alamo square (upon which lie the painted ladies the fictional location) was nearly a war zone. Just 13 years ago the San Francisco Chronicle had a front page story about 6 murders in a year only a block away due to the drug trade. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1999/08/14/MN46914.DTL
It's more laid back and the Berkeley/Oakland hills are backed up by thousands of acres of parks and undeveloped reservoir land. Plus both the views and the weather are better. And you can get into the city in a matter of minutes plus have a shorter drive to Tahoe and Yosemite.
Facebook is in Palo Alto and Menlo Park, people. This is talking about San Francisco, not exactly the same thing.
Wayne Cooksey joined the flight of African-Americans from this city last year to escape soaring rents and buy a home. Michael Higgenbotham left six years ago for a safer neighborhood and better schools for his three children.
One guy bought a home, and the other guy found a better school? Sounds to me like people are moving up in the world! These are two success stories.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Take BART, dummy.
I grew up in Cupertino, which when I grew up in the early 80s had the diversity of being white and hispanic. Now if you compare my elementary school class photos of those of the current children, you'll see the diversity is now illustrated by Indian and Chinese.
Same homes. Just now these people pay over $1m for the 1400sq ft house I grew up in.
Diversity is all about which races you need to have to be diverse. Can you be diverse without any african americans? Is it more diverse to have only Indian/Chinese vs. White/Mexican? Btw, in certain schools in Cupertino and parts of Sunnyvale, being white is a minority.
Accept the times, or move.
Same thing is happening in Manhattan NYC -- Only the very wealthy can afford to live there, so what you end up with is the rich lawyers, wall-street people and the like, and the dirt-poor, homeless types -- and everyone else has to commute in.
I mean really, if you ever want a photograph of the divide between the haves and have-nots, just start clicking away just about anywhere in NYC on an average day, and you'll see a multi-millionaire walking past a homeless dude.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
It feels weird to cite articles from USA Today that are from 5 yrs ago.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Which is worse: hobos or hipsters?
"Overspecialize, and you breed in weakness." - Major Motoko Kusanagi
This situation probably sounds like something somewhere on the scale from no big deal to f'in great if you are a 20-30 something temporarily occupying that space between overpaying employer and overcharging rentier.
Meanwhile, cities can not sustain themselves on these kind of demographic patterns. Cities need all kinds of people working at all income levels to work efficiently. Banishing the working poor to the hinterlands drives up costs (commuting). It also perverts the perspectives of those living on either side of the tracks, where the motivations and plights of each other become alien, leading to misunderstanding and unnecessary tensions.
Sooner or later, these booms become busts or the underlying social structure collapses, leaving dysfunction.
What I want to know is how an industry that constantly sells itself on easy communication and reduced operational friction continues to centralize itself in a way that drives up its own costs of living and makes it physically vulnerable.
Yep. Our housing finance system forces the middle class portfolio to be overweighted towards leveraged real estate. If you were constructing a portfolio with liquid assets, no manager in his right mind would recommend: 75% REITs bought on margin, 25% other things. Yet that's where a lot of people are except that it's an illiquid asset instead of a REIT.
Until this situation changes, nobody will really want affordable housing despite what they say.
Affordable housing means falling prices, and the whole system is designed so that falling prices are bad. That's why "affordable housing" requires you to earn the poverty badge. A world where section 8 vouchers provided $100 of your $120/mo rent instead of $800 of your $900 rent would work just as well, if not better for the government. It's the trannsition that's a bitch. We missed a golden opportunity with this crisis. The rallying cry should be "START FORECLOSURES". Yes, "owners" would have to move; but if we let the blood run in the housing market, they'd move into a place where the rent was 25% of the mortgage. They could put the other 75% in CDs earning 8% interest instead of paying it to the banks.
Maybe some day the bank/housing cartel really will collapse. I certainly won't mourn its loss; but for now it continues to be propped up.
So the New York Times is complaining that San Francisco rents are too high. Why don't they do an article on how the influx of finance industry professionals are pushing the middle class out of New York? Oh wait, that happened 50 years ago.
Everyone in SF gets to have their say over new building developments (witness the nastiness over 8 Washington http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/18/BAHR1M13A6.DTL), so virtually nothing gets built, which acts to ensure housing prices stay sky high.
Rather than complain about Yuppies, why not support the construction of more housing units, so that supply meets demand and prices come down? And don't give me any crap about low income housing versus market rate units. If you build enough market rate units to meet the massive pent-up demand, then housing will become more affordable for everyone.
No huge budget deficit, ultra conservative politicians, low cost of living, low taxes, low regulation, educated workforce, etc.
If my idea turns into a .com startup I am going there. I can't afford a $700,000 studio apartment for myself, let alone my workers which I can't pay much yet. Last time I looked you could get studio condo in Austin for $90,000. Taxes are lower and I do not have to give out health benefits to my employees.
I know the last line sounded greedy, but when you only have $200,000 in capital you can't waste it. Shoot even if you hire someone for $35,000 a year you spend $30,000 in health benefits! California requires anyone working more than 19 hours a week health insurance. That is just too much money.
Also I do not feel bad paying people $35,000 a year as a college student in UT @ Austin will be thrilled and can make a decent living and not move back in with Mom and Dad for that price.
Seriously California is so business unfriendly I just do not see any point at all doing business there unless you already setup shop years ago.
http://saveie6.com/
If you can't pretend to be a victim, you are not welcome as a participant in "diversity".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Reading some of the early comments, it seems like people are acting like this just affects artists or poor black people or that this is somehow a reversal of white flight (largely a middle-class phenomenon).
I grew up in San Francisco and still live in the Bay Area. Middle-class and even many (by national standards) upper-middle class people have been and continue to be pushed out of the city. It's not really about racial diversity either. It's a socio-economic and cultural thing. It's also an age thing. To me the quintessential San Francisco resident is a yuppy transplant female in her late 20s or early 30s . She works in tech marketing. She's a foodie and loves visiting all the trendy new brunch places and maybe hitting up a street fair afterwards. She could be white, Asian, hispanic or something else. That doesn't mean it's not monotonous and homogenous. It is homogenous and that's what people are complaining about. And if you want to have a family in San Francisco, you need to be downright wealthy. So there's nothing wrong with being a young professional in itself, but when that's all a city has it's lost a lot of its character.
Anyway, such is life in a market economy. I don't know if there's a right or wrong here and a city like San Francisco has seen waves of demographic changes. But don't think this is like people complaining if white people were to return to inner-city Detroit. This is nothing like that. This is really an entire city becoming like the wealthier parts of Manhattan. I don't expect people from other cities to care, but as a San Francisco native I wish Silicon Valley had been a place in Washington state.
Can anyone explain why "black residents" in particular would have to move to Oakland? Is high-tech threatening to the high levels of melanin?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
And people still think we need to continue the "war on drugs". Just legalize everything already!
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Bad Now? Just wait 300 years! Apartments are going to be a B*I*T*C*H when Star Fleet United Federation of Planets moves into Sausalito.
"housing advocates warn that a new wave of gentrification will price middle-class residents out of the city"
San Francisco and "middle-class" are mutually exclusive. SF hasn't had any middle-class residents since at least the mid-90's. To be middle-class in SF/BA would be considered almost upper class in most of the rest of the U.S.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Last time I looked at buying SF property potentially to rent out I was scared off by the regulations the city imposes on landlords. How can anyone sleep at night knowing your tenants are more in control than you are? I'm going to bet I'm not the only one with this impression, which would mean given a choice individual owners will sell long before they'll risk getting into the 'affordable rent' game. Same dynamic may be why the developments are condos, not rentals.
So why no mention of the city's propensity to make being a landlord miserable?
Does it hurt to hear them lying? Was this the only world you had?
Problem with doing that is that you wipe out the imaginary nest egg that millions of baby boomers have in their housing values to rely on for retirement now, rather than later. And that's an awful lot of people in their 50's and 60's to bankrupt and/or force retention in the job market long past their prime. Not to mention clog up social movement/career advancement for the younger generations. There simply is no good answer.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
My dads side of the family were SF natives going to to the 49ers. None of them live there now. The last one left about 15 years ago. Transplant is right, almost no one who lives there now is from SF, let alone the BA or even California.
Your analysis of the homogeneity of SF are spot on.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I guess I'm not following you there, as a truly gifted artist could "do" art or music anywhere in the world.
There are bums who could tear Eric Clapton to shreds. Giftedness is a tiny factor in the equation.
Neither was my apartment. I am not seeing the correlation here...
S.F. is schizophrenic in many ways. It is incredibly diverse in many ways. You have the far left fighting the far far left who are fighting the far sideways left. Tiny enclaves exist in what is essentially a small city. You have hipsters and foodies and all variety of pretentiousness moving there for the urban vibe who then avoid the authentic urban decay a couple blocks away. People will live there and commute an hour away rather than be uncool and live outside the city. The economic base is very weak, it is mostly a residential community with a few financial centers who employee people from out of town, and tourism which really keeps things going. It has areas with desparate poverty and areas with promiscuous affluence. Rent control almost nullfiies the possibility of bringing in new affordable housing. As soon as an area manages to get a little bit cleaned up it is overrun with high priced eateries or dance clubs.
It is an inwardly looking enclave. That's why the problems it has are San Francisco problems and not Bay Area problems. Elsewhere the borders between cities are crossed without even blinking, but the border with S.F. is like a wall.
Obviously.
Have you been to Portland? Have you been to SF? Have you compared the vitality, richness, depth, and access of both cities?
If you have, you will know that there is no comparison. There's a reason SF is a much more expensive city to live in than Portland and, I assure you, it's worth every penny.
And yet people still start businesses here all the time. Happens every day. And those businesses can, if run correctly, be as profitable as they are in other places.
There is no reason why its expensive and that is my very point. I scratch my head. Sure there is supply and demand and Chinese speculators buying TONS of places in cash hoping to flip.
But the end result is why? The cost of doing business and living day to day keeps going up when you can be more successful elsewhere. To me I am part of the market correction in economic terms. I just can not see why anyone would want to live there or do a .com startup there. There are expensive cities around the world and Portland and Austin have many of the same ammenities for cheaper. Portland is nice too but to expensive for my tastes.
http://saveie6.com/
My own two cents, but I've been living in Oakland for 20 years, and never had one urge to move to SF. Oakland has much better weather, amazing parks (10 minute drive from my house and I'm in a redwood forest), and now that it's mathematically impossible to start new clubs, bars, or restaurants in SF they are all moving here!
I get why people have skewed ideas about Oakland (the media, the closet and overt racism) but I tell them: It's a great place to live, but you wouldn't want to visit there.
Did you read about the guy they ate another guys face? he was on a drug in the methamphetamine group.
Seriously, never legalize that crap, it destroys lives immediately. And drug the create psychosis, high energy and delusion should probably be kept out of general populace.
There are drugs that should be removed from the list, but there are some that shouldn't.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There are a ton of advantage to the Bay area and California; especially for start ups.
Every try to get investor in Portland? You go to shmooze some n for months just to get a 100K.
In California you almost always know after the pitch whether or not they will invest.
"Unless you make it as a very rich .COM and become a mulit million aire you can not ever be middle class."
This is quite provable false.
haha, Austin has been trying to say the for over 3 decades. Fact is, Austin doesn't have the money or the technical diversity.
.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
California is so business-unfriendly that I am shocked no one is mentioning it.
No, it's not. We just actually require businesses to be responsible.
"like" a wall? You mean that huge expanse of water known as the bay?
"There is no reason why its expensive "
yes there is, Demand.
"Portland is nice too but to expensive for my tastes."
Are you high?
by what metric is Austin cheaper then Portland?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But why is there such a high demand. Speculators from China are spiking it now, but I do not see a single reason why it is worth the expensive to live and do business when you cna always go cheaper?
YOu need infrastructure and employees, and less rules and regulations to help your business. Sure you can say there are more programmers in Silicon Valley but they will want a boatload of money before they leave their current gigs to take a risk for you. That is money.
Austin is cheaper the last time I looked several years ago as you could get a house for $150k. Perhaps today it is worth $225k but Portland it would be $400k and 1.2 million in Silicon Valley. You can't get a python programmer to work for a pittance of $50k a year in San Francisco. He can't live. Austin he can get a full house.
Walmart did it right by going cheap in Arkansas and the cost savings increased exponentially in time due to compounding interest of investment from the savings back into the company. I think no one looks at this angle just its soooo coool to live in SF man!
Also it doesn't matter where your investors live. Some who want to run it may prefer San Fransisco, but in reality you provide a better value and cost savings by flying there once a month to talk to them then it is to pay rent for yourself or office. You can use the same investors regardless as the point of business is to make money.
http://saveie6.com/
What a one-sided load of excrement this article is. Do the authors not want San Francisco (a city that has never had cheap rents in my experience) to not be successful?
And why is it that (note the clever playing of the race card) that only potentially displaced residents are the ones with creative or artistic value? Do these new people moving in have nothing at all to offer the city? I'm sure that they do.
Cities grow, shrink, and change over time. And how hard is it really to live in Oakland and participate in San Francisco when the two cities are only a short BART ride under the bay?
I mean really, what a waste of bandwidth this whiny article is.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Shit, I dunno. Maybe because more people actually want to live in San Francisco.
Did you read about the guy they ate another guys face? he was on a drug in the methamphetamine group.
I think you mean, 'amphetamine group,' of which methamphetamine is a member.
So, does that statement mean the tox report came back, or is this more of the same idle speculation I've been hearing all week?
Not being a dick here, I seriously want to know. We've got this pool going...
My money is on PCP.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
If you think there's no reason, then you're an idiot. The two main reasons why it's expensive still come down to supply and demand. 1 - San Francisco is a peninsula, so space is, by definition, limited (just like in other expensive cities, such as Manhattan and Hong Kong). 2 - People want to live there - It has mild weather (although not nearly as warm as LA), it has a lot of the amenities of a big city without actually being that big, good food, it's a beautiful city, there are a lot of easily-accessible public parks and whatnot, people here are very tolerant; and there are many unique things here, like the Bay to Breakers race a few weeks ago where people get dressed up have a crazy party, etc etc etc. The lifestyle in San Francisco is obviously desirable, otherwise the housing wouldn't be so expensive. Der.
Oh yeah, and you don't have to fucking drive everywhere, like in almost every place in the US. A person can actually walk to get places.
I guess I'm not following you there, as a truly gifted artist could "do" art or music anywhere in the world.
There are bums who could tear Eric Clapton to shreds.
Indeed there are
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Rent control almost nullfiies the possibility of bringing in new affordable housing.
you are perpetuating a myth of rent control in SF having an impact on new housing construction.
From the San Francisco Rent Ordinance:
San Francisco's rent control law covers most rental property in San Francisco. If you live in San Francisco, you are covered by rent control unless you fall into one of these major exceptions:
1. You live in a building constructed after June of 1979. This "new construction exemption" is the biggest exemption in SF and can not be changed
Therefore, any new construction can be rented at market rates and reassessed with only 60 days notice to the existing renters at any point.
There may be many reasons san francisco doesn't have new affordable housing, lack of space, construction permit process, etc, but rent control isn't one of them.
I moved to San Francisco in 1999, during the last tech boom.
In 2000, the anti-gentrification talk really picked up steam. "Dotcommers" were raising the cost of of living, driving people out of affordable neighborhoods. And yes, Oakland was a common destination for people and businesses who could no long afford San Francisco. Someone painted "DIE YUPPIE SCUM" on the sidewalk in my neighborhood. Fliers were posted decrying the whitening of the Mission district.
A friend asked if I thought there was a solution to the gentrification problem. I told him, "Wait a year."
It's a bubble, it'll pop eventually. When people start complaining about too much money coming into the city, you know something's gone awry.
Don't have to drive anywhere in Silicon Valley??
SF basically means millionaires need not apply. If you make less than that expect 4 hours a day in your car commuting due to the outrageous cost of living. No thank you
http://saveie6.com/
It is connected by land and bridges and ferries to other areas.
That's why marijuana should be removed from that list. When do you ever hear of pot smokers doing anything violent at all? The criminalization of marijuana alone is causing huge economic problems, and legalizing it, without changing the others, would change a lot of things for the better.
I can see not legalizing everything, but pot is about the least harmful drug out there, probably less harmful than alcohol which is itself fully legal, and it's stupid to keep it illegal when we had so many problems when we tried to ban booze.
Yeah, and the only reason people are using those drugs is because "normal" drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and others are so restricted. No one would choose "bath salts" over conventional drugs. There was a time in the US when all drugs were legal, of course there were people that abused them but you saw none of the violence that is associated with the drug culture today. Are drugs good? Hell no. And I wouldn't touch any of them (including the legal ones such as tobacco and synthetic drugs) with a ten foot pole. Drugs destroy families not just because of the devastating effects but because of the huge financial cost to keeping the habit alive caused by the "drug war". It costs thousands of lives, most of them unaffiliated with "drug lords" or the police. We can never fully ban any drug, we can only increase its price and increase policing. The more we increase the price, the more people seek substitutes such as the "bath salts" that caused the incident you described. The more we increase the price, the more violence we create. Tobacco is quite addictive but since it is legal you see next to no violence involving it. We today see little violence associated with alcohol but during prohibition, when alcohol was illegal, there was massive violence associated with it. The drug war has failed, by continuing to ban drugs we condemn families and thousands of innocents to death. Legalizing drugs does not make them any more morally acceptable or a good idea, but it means we will not see the violence associated with the drug trade.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Silicon Valley is not San Francisco.
Yes, and last time I checked, even with bridges and ferries, people are generally disinclined to build directly on open water; and to the south, there are the San Bruno Mountains, Lake Merced, and Daly City (which is the only corridor out of the city). So yes, in other words, ~90% of the city's perimeter is a "wall."
Companies only go to texas for the negative tax rates.
Yeah, you can live there cheap if you dont use public services. Because you dont want to use the public services in texas. Or be without a car.
They are a New York paper complaining about a competing city getting all the high tech startups and therefore venture capital now that Wall Street has basically self-destructed the New York financial markets. Meanwhile the same paper is reporting that the jobs ax is going to fall again on the banking sector as upper level management throws middle management overboard in order to save their own bonuses: http://news.yahoo.com/wall-st-few-places-hide-jobs-ax-hovers-220146813--sector.html
About the only thing that needs changing about San Francisco (and California, in general) is to not have Prop 13 apply to non-residential commercial properties. There would be a quick rebalancing in what gets built.
-- Terry
do you understand that people create these designer drugs for the sole reason to be legal? IF the alternatives that have existed legally for thousands of years were available, I would wager drugs such as that one would never have even been created. I may be wrong, but there would be no need to create these synthetic drugs that are horrible for everyone
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I lived in the Bay Area from 1995 to 2004.
I read the exact same editorial, with a few proper nouns changed, on average, every 2-3 months.
So, given that...
Either:
a)It's already happened, since people started shrieking it was going to happen at least as far back as 1995, and probably sooner. Get over it.
b)It's never going to happen, because if it hasn't happened since 1995, it never will. Get over it.
Dood, have you seen the gang fights that result at White Castles at 1am after some serious tokage?!?! It's like hey man, that's *my* burger.. give it back!
Could you be any more vague? Which jobs?
kthxbye...
But of course, nobody on the right. You have to have *some* standards!
I believe he was on MDPV, which is a member of the cathinone family. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPV The trip reports for this chemical on bluelight and other forums are just damn scary though!
Consider boarding schools, especially out of state.
They are a great way for kids to associate with quality students in an environment of your choice.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
There are network effects in a big city. Some of it may be irrational, some of it may matter less with current technology, but it is a real thing. You simply don't have the same density in a mid size city. There are positive effects and negative effects from lower density, and just because you (and I) interpret the factors in a manner that makes a mid size city more appealing doesn't mean that is the only or best way to look at it for every case.
Many success stories such as instagram would have played out differently if they hadn't happened in a place with a huge density of talent, creative types, hipsters, billionaires, tech companies, etc.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Drug "wars" between potheads usually just involve a lot of whining.
"Real artists ship."